Hamlet Act I Questions and Answers

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Jacqueline Chung

Ms. Ledman

AP Literature

5 March 2012

Hamlet Act I

1. How do the setting and events and style of the first several lines of Act I, scene 1, establish a mood of foreshadowing or impending disaster? Cite and explain specific words, details, techniques, and events.

Within the first few lines of the Act I of Hamlet, Shakespeare already establishes a tense, dark atmosphere when two soldiers, Barnardo and Francisco, exchange a few words about their guard shifts on the platform of the Elsinore castle at midnight in Denmark and Francisco describes his shift: "'Tis bitter cold, And I am sick at heart" (I.i.7-8). The cold, dark, and depressing atmosphere shares the negative connotation with evil since cold and darkness are usually considered evil, which foreshadows the evilness within the play. The atmosphere then further heightens when Horatio and Marcellus accompany Barnardo on guard duty and Marcellus asks if "this thing appeared again tonight," the "thing" representing the ghost that Bernardo and Marcellus encountered a few times in the past. The ghost suddenly appears and Barnardo describes the ghost as "the same figure like the king that's dead," Hamlet's father who